Monthly Archives: November 2004

The plot thickens in the Ukraine. 100,000 supporters of the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko occupy Kiev’s Independence Square in freezing cold protesting the defeat of their candidate by three percentage points. Yesterday, Ukraine’s Parliament gave a boost to their claims of election fraud by voting for annulling the election. Representatives of Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovich, the hand picked successor of outgoing president Lenoid Kuchma, are now in talks for some sort of non-violent settlement. Speculations range from a new election on December 12 to civil war to secession of Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions if Yushchenko takes power. Conspiracy theorists point to a CIA directed coup to put the pro-Western Yushchenko into power. According to one Moscow newspaper, such ideas are frequent among Putin’s advisors, who feel that the United States is meddling in Russia’s affairs. This is an especially popular idea since ..read more

First I urge everyone to read Chalmers Johnson’s new article “How to Create a WIA — Worthless Intelligence Agency.”

There are certain political ironies that have occurred in the last 15 years that continually stick in my mind. One is the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. While Clinton was intent on preventing genocide in Kosovo, (Or was it stopping. We were led to believe at the time the genocide of Kosovars was already taking place), another more horrible genocide occurred a few years earlier in Rwanda. An event so horrible, it is said that 700,000 people were killed mostly by machetes. Nothing was done to stop it and like the extermination of European Jewry, the slaughter of Armenians in 1910, or the killing of a million Cambodians by Pol Pot in the 1970s, we are left to ask the question of how was it allowed ..read more

Let me tell you about the ‘invalids.’ The invalids are young men who ride the Moscow metro begging for change from passengers. Begging, however, is really not the right word. What they are really doing is collecting a payment. A payment of a few rubles from all the passengers who either fought in Chechnya and returned physically unscathed (though mentally, who knows) or those who were lucky enough to be a woman, too old, weren’t sent there during their two year, mandatory military service for all men over 18, or were able to pay to get out of their service. See, these men lost their limbs in the war in Chechnya. Sometimes it’s an arm (these are the lucky ones), sometimes it’s an arm and a leg. The most frequent of late have been those missing both legs. These men are only torsos. They are propped in a wheelchair or ..read more

So I promised to tell about my trip to Ryazan. Ryazan is a Russian provincial town located about a three hour train ride south from Moscow. I left on a Monday morning on the 7:15 train. The ticket cost about $10. The train ride was quite pleasant. I spent most of my time staring out the window because I’ve never seen what Russia looks like outside of Moscow. Peppered between Moscow and Ryazan are small towns and villages. By villages I literally mean villages. Some seemed to only consist of several houses. There were no paved roads, and thanks to the recent rains full of mud. Some of these villages looked like they haven’t changed in over 100 years.

I was greeted in Ryazan by Pavel Tribunskii, a scholar Stephen Frank knows from Ryazan (Stephen is one my dissertation advisors at ..read more

Sasha Uskov and I drinking vodka in Ryazan.

A quick note because I’ve been waiting for about 10 min. for a 1.41 MB file to download. The internet in Russia SUCKS!!!!!!!!! I’m currently at 38.6 kbps. That’s right, 38.6. With my DSL connection in LA, this file would have been finished 9 min. and 50 seconds ago. I don’t know how I’m going to survive. So please anyone reading this, do not send me any large files, attachments, ANYTHING that is larger than a regular email message. Russia is the poster child for capitalist uneven development . . . Finally, my file is finished.